Feedback on Techrestore and iBook Hard Drive upgrade

Sadly, I've had my iBook (see sig) for just over 7 months, and I'm already down to my last 3GB of hard drive space. Originally, when I bought the iBook new, I had to get it in the stock configuration of 40GB HDD, as Amazon did not allow any built to order (and Amazon's price was unbeatable - $785 for a brand new 12" iBook ).

So, I'm thinking of upgrading my hard drive to something bigger. I guess I could do it myself, but I understand that it would void my warranty, and it is actually pretty difficult. Therefore, I've looked to see if I can have it done otherwise. Enter Techrestore - they can do it for not much more than it would cost me if I did it myself, and if they do it, it will not void my warranty (except for the hard drive itself, of course), plus they offer a warranty on their hard drive too. In addition, they do it within 24 hours and transfer your data too:

As long as I'm having it done, I figured I'd go for the biggest practical HDD they offer: 120GB 5400 RPM.

So my question is: what are your experiences with Techrestore?

I ask because I have some questions, and I sent them an email a few days ago to the email address for contact and they have not responded - not a good sign in my opinion. Basically, I wanted to know if 120GB will work for a 12" 1.33Ghz iBook, and what do they mean by "transfer data"... will they clone my HDD or just transfer document data etc (and I'll have to re-install all my apps from discs).

Can you confirm the no warranty violation thing, it would just be something I would find a third party of apple to verify before i jumped in, because well a logic board next week makes this a bad bad call.

Sssh... don't tell Apple, but I just dropped a 100gb hard drive in a friend's Applecare'd 1.2ghz 12" iBook. Got two years left on the warranty and the OEM 30gb Toshiba hard drive was just not enough room. It was easy as pie because I've read these MR threads about the task and because of iFIXIT.com. As I left all the yellow tapes intact and did a darn near perfect job, it should not harm the warranty on the logic board or anything else. The only thing that is now not covered by warranty is the 30gb hard drive but so what, it's covered by Hitachi's three year warranty. Also, I just cloned the drive through disk utility and a firewire enclosure. It took a couple of hours and it was the first time I'd attempted an iBook hard drive swap.

I gotta say, all the MR knowledge really helped me do the swap. I recall last year starting to open up my 14" ibook 1.42ghz and getting really sweaty and scared about it, stalled on unscrewing the battery enclosure screw. It was a piece of cake if you prep yourself for the job with an egg carton for the screws and do it slow with no interruptions.

As long as I'm having it done, I figured I'd go for the biggest practical HDD they offer: 120GB 5400 RPM.

I ask because I have some questions, and I sent them an email a few days ago to the email address for contact and they have not responded - not a good sign in my opinion. Basically, I wanted to know if 120GB will work for a 12" 1.33Ghz iBook, and what do they mean by "transfer data"... will they clone my HDD or just transfer document data etc (and I'll have to re-install all my apps from discs).

Click to expand...

P.S. If you are looking for space right now the largest hd available is a 160gb 5400rpm drive which should work fine in your 1.33ghz.

Read my previous post. But be smart, if you are going to pay a tech to drop a new hard drive in it, you might as well splurge for a superdrive too.

If you want speed, the fastest laptop drive is a 100gb 7200rpm Hitachi or Seagate. Space, then go for the 160gb hd. Also make sure you are maxed out on ram. Personally, I really notice the difference in speed when you bump up to 7200rpms, but it sounds like you want space. I think Toshiba makes a 120 and 160gb hard drive, get their 16mb cache drive -- should be slightly faster than the 8mb cache drives.

You know I haven't thought about this issue as much as I used to, but Apple should realize that people are internet savvy now and they should just offer a lower cost upgrade on their hard drives. It really makes a world of difference. Apple should also try to discount ram instead of bleeding us for it -- I, for one, would rather give my money to Apple for a good price on ram instead of some third party unit.

When my PowerBook G4 12" hard drive kept giving me problems, I sent the computer off to TechRestore for a new drive. I got the original 60GB 4200RPM hard drive replaced with an 80GB 5400 RPM drive for $229. I could've saved money if I'd attempted it myself, but I didn't want to risk it. They responded extremely quickly to all my emails. The next day after I made the order, I had a box to ship my PowerBook in and they picked it up a few hours later. I got it back in two days and it has worked perfectly ever since. I highly, highly recommend them. (I didn't have them transfer data, since I had all my documents backed up on a firewire drive and the hard drive had so much corruption that I knew I'd have to reinstall Mac OS X from scratch anyway, so I don't know how their data transfer works.)

Thank you everybody for a lot of good info. TechRestore sounds reputable. Special thanks also to California for mentioning all the options. I was aware of iFixit, and even looked through their guide for replacing HDD, but decided not to go that route myself. First, although I'm sure it is totally doable, it is not as simple as, say, putting in memory (which I did - maxed out to 1.5GB), or replacing the keyboard. Second, the price for labor at TechRestore is actually not that high, so I'm not saving that much... of course, there is shipping...

I looked at the 160GB HDD but the sweet spot pricewise looks to be the 120GB, so I think I'll go with that. Speedwise, I'm thinking 5400 RPM, partly again, because price/performance you are paying a LOT more for 7200 RPM, but more importantly, I believe the 5400 runs cooler and is slightly less failure prone. Re-superdrive, I already have an external DL DVD burner, and I have not ever found the need to burn DVDs on the road, so I don't have a burning (yes, very bad pun) need for a superdrive on this iBook.

Re: Apple prices - totally agree. I'd be happy to pay Apple slightly more than TechRestore, but good grief, not exponentially more. I assume however that they are smart enough to have run some marketing models and figured out that they make more from bleeding those willing to pay their prices than they'd gain by going cheaper and getting more to use that service... hence their pricing decision. Of course, life has taught me that businesses can be astonishingly irrational, so maybe my assumptions are not warranted wrt. Apple.

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